How Do We Protect Against Rare Threats?

In the aftermath of the Asian tsunami disaster, pundits have offered a
standard array of panaceas. One of the most common calls has been for improved
warning systems so “this sort of thing never happens again.”

The first thing we
can do is to abandon the illusion that we can prevent any kind of disaster from
ever happening again. Improved warning systems are a great idea and will
certainly reduce the risk of a repeat of this disaster, but we can be absolutely
certain that this kind of disaster will happen again, somewhere, sometime,
regardless of what we do.

The principal force behind the “never happen again”
mentality is a desire to find some permanent fix for problems so we can go back
to living our lives on cruise control. Nothing is harder than maintaining a
state of vigilance when things are monotonously quiet. Just ask any soldier who
ever pulled guard duty. But eternal vigilance isn't just the price of liberty -
it's the price of everything. A tsunami warning system will save lives if a
tsunami happens again in a few decades. But will the system still be in place if
nothing happens for 500 years?

A lot of what passes for theology in the wake of
disasters is also merely a desire to go back on cruise control. Of the people
who are criticizing God for not supernaturally intervening in plate tectonics,
it would be interesting to know how many have bothered to write a check for
tsunami relief. When people ask how a good God could permit such a disaster to
happen, most of them are really asking “How could a good God create a universe
that forces me to get personally involved? How could a good God confront me with
difficult questions? How could a good God disturb my peace and quiet?”

Another
widely proposed remedy is better public education. Recognizing the signs of an
approaching tsunami would have saved many lives, but a lot of the victims were
European tourists who got an education as good as any American student. They
were blind-sided as badly as the locals. Over the years I’ve had over 2,500
students in my physical geology class, and every one – those that came to class
anyway – has heard about the mysterious withdrawal of the water that often
precedes a tsunami. Certainly many of the European victims got the same
information. Why didn’t it help?

Education is only a quarter of the solution.
First, people have to learn the facts. Second, they have to make a personal
commitment to retaining them. Third, they have to think through the implications
of the facts and their connections to everything else, and finally, they must be
able to recall them and act on them on demand. No education system can help
unless the individuals being educated make a total personal commitment to
internalizing what they learn, then keeping it current by constantly connecting
it to everything else in their lives. No modern society any longer can afford a
popular culture that views learning as merely an option, that accepts it as
normal that people forget what they learned in school. We can no longer afford
to view "Don't Know Much About History" as anything other than a badge of shame.
No doubt many of the better educated victims of the tsunami had an earth science
class that described tsunamis, but dismissed it with “I’ll never need to know
this.” One European survivor specifically mentioned being baffled by seeing the
sea suddenly withdraw, a classic illustration of the Air Force dictum “what you
don’t know won’t hurt you, it will kill you.”

At least tsunamis are somewhat
predictable. Terrorist acts are not merely rare, but specifically calculated to
defeat attempts to predict them. So how do we protect ourselves? After 9-11, a
common complaint was “They tell us to be alert, but they don’t tell us what to
watch out for.” So here it is. You notice everything, all the time, so you can
spot anything out of the ordinary.

The only real protection against rare threats
is for as many people as possible to know as much as possible, and be
continually aware of their environment. One person on the beach who recognized
the warning signs of a tsunami could have saved hundreds of lives (one person
who actually did was a ten-year old British schoolgirl who had recently learned
about tsunamis in her geography class). The only
thing that can protect us against rare dangers is a widespread belief that all
learning is relevant, all the time, and that the principal obligation of all
people, all the time, is learning more about the world around them.

Can we
really remember everything we learn, and spend all our waking hours learning new
information? No. You can’t run 100 miles an hour, either, but you can bet every
runner tries. The one guarantee you have of a fighting chance when a rare threat
materializes is that you personally know what is happening and how to react to
ensure your survival.